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Sookie (Anna Paquin) is in good hands (and strong, beefy arms) with werewolf Alcide (Joe Manganiello) as her protector. Photo:

A vampire lies still, eyes closed, in an open coffin.

The floor creaks as a 3-year-old boy and his scared-out-of-her-wits mom walk slowly through the dark house, unsure of their fate.

Then, suddenly, the vampire opens his eyes, flashes his fangs, picks up the young mortal before him, places him inside the coffin and closes the lid.

Screaming ensues.

This is not Bon Temps, La., and a scene from the much-anticipated Season 3 of “True Blood,” but rather a kiddie haunted house set up for Halloween in Pittsburgh, Pa., circa 1979. And that little boy was a very unafraid Joe Manganiello who’s now, oddly enough, still meddling in enemy territory.

The 33-year-old hunk of a man is the series’ newest piece of meat, Alcide Herveaux, and he’s hungry like a wolf. Because he is one.

The fangtastic series, which begins again tonight, goes lupine this season, and Manganiello, with his burly beard and ripped physique, is leading the pack.

“I wanted to be a monster so bad as a kid,” says the actor, whose character enters the story line to protect Sookie as she seeks out her beloved Bill, kidnapped at the end of last season. “Now I am. It’s awesome.”

Manganiello was already watching the HBO series when a friend alerted him to true-blood.net, where diehard fans were beginning to list their preferred choices to play the werewolf character who first appears in book three of Charlaine Harris’ “The Southern Vampire Mysteries.”

He was at the top of their list.

“In the books, the character is described as being really big, so I guess I had that going for me,” says the 6-foot-5 stud, known to many as Brad from “How I Met Your Mother” and Owen from “One Tree Hill.”

So after immersing himself in the books, Manganiello began bugging his agents and managers about auditioning for the part — a whole year and a half before series creator Alan Ball and his team even began casting for it.

When the call to audition finally came, he was ready to howl.

“I wanted somebody who had a very different feel from the vampires,” says Ball. “Someone who was very warm. A big shaggy dog, actually. But also, very sexy and quietly heroic. And Joe just brought all that to the table.”

Once he got the part, Manganiello went straight to the primary source to prepare — watching National Geographic specials on the wild animals.

“If I’m playing a werewolf, I want to study wolves,” he says. “Not necessarily werewolves, or other people’s performances of them. I wanted my take to be fresh. I wanted to fill up my tank with as much wolfiness as I possibly could.”

Luckily, Ball was all about authentic wolfiness, and brought in a team of real wolves (and trainers) to play the characters’ animal counterparts.

“I’m not a big fan of silly CGI,” he says. “I’ve always wanted the supernatural in this show to be a deeper manifestation of nature, rather than something that exists outside of it.”

That said, when a scene calls for a wolf to claw someone’s clavicle and nosh on his or her neck, CGI steps in. Ball also uses digital technology in post-production to remove the leashes that are kept on the wolves.

“The wolves are never taken off leash,” he says. “Especially if you’re using raw meat to get them to growl and make the face you need them to make.”

For the most part, though, the wolves are domesticated, making it easy for the actors to form a kind of friendship with their “other halves,” as Manganiello did with Thunder, his golden-haired, yellow-eyed North American timber wolf.

“I got to take him for a walk up through the mountains,” he says. “He knows me now. We’re cool.”

If only his bloodthirsty, vampire nemesis could see the werewolf’s warm and fuzzy side — their “down home, Joe Six Pack mentality,” as Ball calls it.

Legends dating back decades all agree on one thing: Werewolves and vampires do not get along, and their relationship on “True Blood,” although an anomaly at first, is no exception.

“At my audition, Alan suggested that when I think about vampires, to imagine the way a Jew would think of a Nazi. That’s how much they hate each other,” says Manganiello.

Ball explains it, perhaps more gently this time, as basic human nature: “Look at all the minorities that hate each other. If you’re an oppressed minority and there’s this other oppressed minority, it’s so easy — and ultimately stupid — to target the hatred you feel toward yourself on this other group. It’s like, ‘What I am is better than you, so I’m going to hate you so I could feel good about myself.’ ”

There’s certainly no lack of hate — and dirty, sexy love, for that matter — this season.

The triangle between Sookie (Anna Paquin) and vampires Bill (Stephen Moyer) and Eric (Alexander Skarskgard) continues, and just when you think three’s a crowd, Manganiello’s Alcide is thrown into the mix.

“He’s this gentle giant,” Manganiello says of Alcide. “But once he becomes involved, if you cross him or try to hurt Sookie, the beast comes out.”

He won’t be the only one.

Ball’s incorporation of werewolves is just the beginning of adding a whole world of other supernatural beings to the show.

“At the heart of [the show], our main supernatural creatures are Bill, Eric, Jessica and Pam,” says Ball. “But there are others with different non-human powers that we discover along the way — including Sookie. We’ll find out what she is this season.”

If Manganiello has anything to say about it, he’d like to stick around to see it all materialize, and will risk even his own relationiship to do so. “[My girlfriend] yells at me when I try to eat meat without utensils,” he says. “But I cry ‘character research!’ ”